Vaughan

Just asking, but who is Steve? Does he also quote statistics as to what extent "footfall" translates into gross income for the businesses themselves? We have heard a lot of different versions of that this year. Footfall, to my way of thinking, is about as vague a calculation, as "carbon footprint".

That is astounding. How can the BA possibly sell their green agenda for boats to go electric, when they start withdrawing what few charging points exist, because people are actually using them??

Most hire boats have a Broads type filter which consists of a long brass tube coming from the hull skin fitting (with seacock) which means the top of the tube is above the waterline outside. A tried and trusted method which means even if you drop the cap on the tube in the bilges, you still won't sink the boat and you will still get water through to the engine, without drawing air.

I don't want to appear callous or mercenary, as I have run small yards and have kept those high standards myself. And it was always me who got in the dinghy and cleaned and touched up the hulls! But I have also run big yards, where I had to very quickly learn the sad facts of the economics. When your business is in the hands of accountants, it is all about the bottom line. One of the first costs they will attack will be staffing, especially casual staff on turn-round days. So I am afraid hull cleaning is the first job to go "out of the window". I have had to deal with an awful lot of customer complaints in my time - I still wake up dreaming of some of them - but all I can say is, I have never had a complaint about a dirty hull.

You have now gone on ze list!

Interesting to see two such different appraisals from hirers of Silverline boats this year. I could suggest that the very high standards kept by small family yards in the past have proved too expensive to be profitable. I think that is what mainly brought about my father's decision to sell Hearts Cruisers.

My father used to tell hirers who asked, that the only way to catch Bream was with left - handed wiggle maggots. The ones that wiggled to the right were no good. Harry Rout, who owned the stores on the River Green and did all our grocery orders, caught on to the joke and started selling them in plastic tubs, labelled left - handed wiggle maggots.

We have a member here called Tobster who is from the Newson family and his avatar is Newson boats' flag. Perhaps send him a PM?

Ah, but they don't need moorings, do they? Nor do they need the navigation to be dredged to a suitable depth above MLWS (in the case of the Yare). If you run aground in one of those, you just pick it up and walk away. All the paddlers would need at Langley dyke is to maintain public access to the slipway and provide a bit of car parking. If you don't want to simply park out in the road. As Hylander says, the bins are already there. I agree with a lot of the comments in this past hour and I fear this has become the way forward. The public can't be trusted to behave properly in the countryside ; the landowners fear the threat of litigation and so does the BA, who can no longer feel confident to simply provide an earth bank with some grass, where people set their rhond anchors, just as they always used to "in my day". Nowadays a "mooring" has to mean a made up quay with posts and what Robin (Londonrascal) has described as "yet more bark chippings and signage". But the end result will be the same : no more moorings will mean no more interest in private Broads boating, which will flood the market with secondhand boats and kill off the BA's own revenue in river tolls. We can go on analysing the reasons for it until we are blue in the face but it is a creeping malaise which must be addressed.

Sorry Doug, but I can't agree with that one, having grown up on the Yare. Anyway, it's not just the south rivers - the problem is all over. We hear about so many leases of banks for moorings, that the BA have somehow failed to renew. Barton Turf Staithe being a classic example. Even the Whitlingham Gravel Pits (which I view with disdain) have been a failure to renew a lease after what must have been a great deal of money invested in the site. Where do we go from here? Why do we pay our river tolls? Just so that we can go out from our marina in Stalham and go round in circles on Barton Broad for the day? Navigation, by its very definition, means going from place to place. Navigation means a destination - it means moorings! Landowners are either closing off their banks or charging exorbitant prices to moor, while the BA are failing to negotiate leases even on their existing moorings, let alone finding new ones. I am sorry but the equation is simple : no more moorings means no more pleasure cruising in private boats, so no more river tolls paid. It is a slow but steady downward spiral.

I often used to clean the bottom of hire boat tanks in the spring. When you change the fuel filters in spring, if the sediment trap -"Jam Jar" filter has muck in the bottom, it must have come from somewhere! I always used an old fashioned brass sump pump with a length of 3/8" copper pipe but any old hand pump will do. You will be amazed how much muck comes out and how long it takes before you start to pump clean diesel. This is the reason why the feed pipe to the engine always stops about an inch and a quarter above the bottom of the tank, so as not to pick up sediment. At sea, with the boat rolling, the tank is stirred up and the muck comes up the pipe into the filters. Most tanks are fitted with baffles to stop them slopping about but this does not have much effect in reality. I am sure the RNLI could confirm that the vast majority of their call-outs to boats broken down, are because of muck in the fuel.

There was a daily train of goods vans from Lowestoft, via Norwich, Dereham and Kings Lynn, to the marshalling yards at Whitemoor, usually containing fresh fish. It is seen here going through Kimberly Park station, hauled by the class B12 locomotive that is now preserved and running on the North Norfolk Railway. And here is the same train, hauled by my model of the same engine. I have photo evidence for almost all the trains that I will be running. It looks like a mirror image, as the station building at Kimberly is on the up platform but at Thuxton it is on the down side. I have just had a visit from a neighbour with a holiday home nearby, who is an accomplished railway modeller as well as a recently retired train driver, so I wanted him to see the layout running, before I now put everything away in boxes again and start doing a lot of modifications to the track work. So this was the last train to run on the layout yesterday and there won't be any more "playing trains" for maybe two months or more. Roll on Christmas. Oops, sorry, I shouldn't have said that . . . . .

Well, what a thread! A classic example of wild speculation on an Internet forum, if ever I saw it. It seems we don't even know which boat was towing which. In addition the forum name of a member has now been "outed" and identified as the owner of a boatyard. Why would he have posted under a pseudonym on the forum, if he did not want to remain anonymous? For that matter, who is Meantime? In his latest incarnation? He never says who he is, but he claims to know all about boatyards and seems to have no hesitation in naming others.

Nice one! Your comment, as well as the boat!

Thank you David and I agree with what you say. Except for that first sentence! My big concern is partly "where do they come from and why do they book" but mainly these days, I am very worried about "how do they enjoy the Broads when they get here". In this sense I am certain that the Broads is seriously losing its appeal. I have asked before - do people still have the same FUN any more? Nowadays there is too much of a struggle to find moorings, to the extent that it becomes stressful. The Broads is a great holiday for children. I grew up there! But then in the old days most hire boats went out towing a sailing dinghy. This gives so much more flexibility and eases the strain on the moorings. Imagine - you arrive in the afternoon and drop the weight on Malthouse Broad. The kids can spend the rest of the afternoon sailing and exploring, having their own in fun in safety. All they have to be told is to stay within sight of the cruiser. The dog can be rowed ashore to the island for walks. In the evening the adults row ashore for a drink in the pub and then have happy memories of the rather wobbly experience of trying to find their cruiser again, in the dark! I have often seen about 50 boats on weights on Malthouse Broad and I remember when the whole riverbank on the other side from Lower St in Horning was just earth bank with free moorings, almost all the way from the Ferry and round the Swan corner. It wasn't that long ago! So most of the hire boats moored there for free and rowed the dinghy across to the pubs and shops, which thrived as a result. But then sure enough, greed entered the equation and everyone started charging for moorings. And look at the sad commercial state of Horning village now.

I blame it on Dr Packman.

Very good post, thank you Robin. I agree with everything you say. I remember those young couples that you mention were known as DINKYs - double income, no kids - and they were definitely a market to work on! As to the weather, in the old days it made no difference at all to bookings as they were all in advance. What it would definitely affect, would be the year after and that was most noticeable. If you have suffered a cold and windy week on the Broads in August when it poured with rain every day, you don't want to repeat the experience next year! Nowadays it might make a difference to those who book last minute for a short break off season but like you, I really don't think it is a contributory factor to the big problem. For Dr Packman, in his position, to suggest that this evident recession is mainly down to bad weather, is very sad.

Is that the Pleasure Boat at Hickling, by any chance?

Well well! So serious users of SUPs already have their own rules of practice, which include restrictions on areas of ports and waterways where they must not paddle. Very interesting. I was also interested to read that when on a waterway, a SUB meeting another one will give way to the left, "just as you do on the road". Which is contrary to COLREGS and local bye-laws. I also note the difference between a vessel of over 15m or under 15m. Broads boats already have a beam restriction of 12' 6" and hire boats are restricted to 15 metres. For reasons which start to become obvious. Restrictions on navigation and the type of vessel already exist and have done for "donkey's years" . They just need to be up- dated and considered, in the light of a new sport activity which is very new to the Broads area. Let's keep talking! At least no-one has been killed. Yet.

I wish to declare that any opposition that I have to paddle boards is entirely concerned with safety. In all the years of my career I have been driven by the need for holidaymakers to be safe on the water. I have even been involved myself in the writing of safety regulations - which were the first ones on the Broads. Yes we all have our "rights" to paddle where we like but we must all have the right to expect to go boating in safety. Paddling about in the middle of the river right by Wroxham bridge, with all those cruisers, day boats and large commercial passenger vessels is simply not safe. Even Dr Packman has just admitted that, in his roundabout way.

You have your opinion and I have mine. Time will tell and I think that will be sooner, rather than later.

Oh yes, they are. I have known all of these cycles since the early 50s and each one has been worse. There used to be 3000 hire boats ; now there are less than 700 and getting less almost as we speak. There were over a hundred boatyards all providing service, moorings and infrastructure. Now there are little more than a handful. You call that much as previously? The reason we, private owners, complain about the lack of moorings and facilities is because of the catastrophic and continuing decline in the hire boat business. Plenty of boats, but at what price? A recession in the hire boat business has always been followed by the bottom falling out of the secondhand boat market. It is already happening if you compare prices from last year to this. Plenty of boats for sale, but for how long will they continue to sell? Owning a medium size motor cruiser on a marina or boatyard mooring is now costing around £4000 a year in fixed costs, before you ever fill the diesel tank and take it down the river, with your wallet handy to pay all the mooring fees. The secondhand boat market will not support that level of cost for much longer. Believe me. Even at today's prices it is cheaper to hire a boat for a couple of weeks in off season, than to own one. We have to "fess up" to this - boating on the Broads as we have known and loved it is in grave danger of never being the same again as it is threatened from many different directions. Too many of these threats come from the Authorities themselves, who really should know better, when history is staring them in the face. For Dr Packman to announce in public that the problem is down to the weather gives me no confidence whatever in the future of Broads navigation.

Young, fresh and inexperienced apprentices used to "cut their teeth" in provincial journalism on what was called "Births, Deaths and Marriages". I suppose local democracy is the new politically acceptable title for that level of actual local knowledge.

Seems JP blames the whole thing on the weather!

To answer that seriously, I would say that a pedestrian on a road is not a vehicle (which a bicycle is) so I suggest that a paddle board on a river is a vessel, like any other and should keep to the right. Next step, is to educate the paddle boarders as to which side is the right.